Top CEOs have expressed relief after U.S. President Donald Trump backed away from further European tariffs, but told CNBC they were still prioritizing being resilient amid geopolitical instability and regionalization.
Conor Hillery, JP Morgan’s co-CEO for Europe, told CNBC European leaders’ tougher stance on Trump was “very good for business.”
Trump announced Wednesday that he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had agreed on a “framework of a future deal” involving Greenland, and he would not proceed with 10% tariffs on eight European countries that had resisted his efforts.
European markets rebounded in morning dealmaking, with auto-related stocks notching the continent’s biggest gains. European carmakers are particularly sensitive to levies given their global supply chains and Stateside manufacturing operations.
Speaking to CNBC on Thursday from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Hillery said European leaders’ coordinated stance on Trump was “something that business has been crying out for.”
“It’s more cohesion among European leaders, more policy driven towards business growth, stability, innovation, investment and so forth. What you’ve seen over the last few days has obviously been more focused on Greenland and tariffs and so forth, and it has borne fruit,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
JP Morgan can invest in any market. They just need time to shift their exposure.
EU needs to keep switching away from US investment. If we return to investing, it must be cautiously and linked to US policy stability.
I think about 99% of the problems in the U.S. are linked to businesses inserting themselves into government. Admittedly those are mainly U.S. businesses, but it’s also Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others.
On the one hand, I can understand how having so much money to spend, could be a helpful investment for a county, but what inevitably always seems to happen, is that the government winds up incentivized to keep corporations and other governments happy to keep the money flowing, while the needs of the American tax payers are just kind of discarded. But of course, we’re all still expected to keep paying taxes for policies and projects that usually don’t benefit us in anyway.
Kinda seems like corporations paying such low (and often no taxes), should be incentive enough for their investment, but they always feel entitled to more. It becomes a real problem when businesses invest in a government or government contractors, because they always want to maximize returns on their investments, as if it’s no different than putting money into a private company. Inevitably they demand more and more control over the returns, which equates to more control over government. Meanwhile the tax payers are still footing the bill to keep a government going that now just exists to be a middle man for allocating the invested money into projects that don’t benefit the average American in any way, and then using tax dollars to bail out private companies when their endless greed and stupid fucking ideas inevitably crash the economy once again (AI).
Wild suggestion, but perhaps if the U.S. just collected taxes from corporations, they wouldn’t need to rely on “investments” that ultimately just become a backdoor allowing billionaires and foreign governments control over the United States.